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I was hoping to reply before this thread turns into a bloodbath or something, here's hoping.

Overall I think there are some aspects of the story that are good, there are a few nice moments in there, it's certainly not *die laughing* material. Not sure what happened with the post production on some lines (over bassy?), but anyway.

It seems I have found a friend in Trevor at any rate, the bloke's an American, based on a couple of charecters and some real voices I have in recordings (it's amazing what you can pickup out of read aloud copyright notices), he's not British and he's supposed to be a weirdo -quite out of his head, you'd have to be to be discussing old comedy routines (that's in the foot notes of the script, and the "dude" line was added by the script writer as a late inclusion as well, some of this stuff may well alienate listeners I guess). As I was saying to Matthew the lines as they were written sounded like he (the Dude, Matthew has a few years of sanity left???? Can we have a confirmation of this fact? )was a bit "schitzo", part Australian, Part American, part British, and as 'greenhorn' isn't british and 'mate' isn't American a few words got the adlib treatment.

As for the "barman/publican" I think it would've benefited if I'd done a second take as that was the first time I'd run through those lines that morning. I might also add that the voice is a combination of those I've heard on BBC Radio, so the accusation that nobody sounds like that on radio ever if it were to so come up is a bit of a fairy myth (see below for more on stylised radio voices).

I can take criticism, so I really couldn't careless what kind of slagging goes on about the two charecters I played, though I am more than certain the delivery of the "dude" was top notch insofar as how I pictured him from what I'd been given to work with. I can't help if people don't like Americans etc. Most people have trouble believing that the recording is in fact of me and not someone else to, which is another goal of voice acting. It doesn't mean I wont try harder next time.

I tend to dislike scripts which have "cockney" written on them for a few reasons really:

A) Everyone seems to have their own idea of what cockney sounds like
B) I'm not sure I've ever really met a through and through cockney speaking person
C) I don't have the time at the moment to actually push my voice that far and I don't have much in the way of exceptionally good cockney recordings to meld phrases and vowel sounds from.

The other thing to remember with radio is that voices are stylised. Pronounciations are deliberately accentuated as part of the experience and that's what I hope to bring out in any voice I do, and I'd encourage any other voice artist to do the same. A lot of TV announcers don't really speak the way you hear them in real life either, though it seems that some have gotten stuck in their voice patterns after reading deeply for so long.

I think what needs to be remembered when critiquing a program like this is that I don't believe this was ever a seriously written comedy, Mr Aldridge has included a lot of his own spinoff/you had to be at X or Y to know what's really going on kind of thing. Which is good if you get all the in jokes/have also been to a christmas party and overdone things before turning up to a recording session... Some types of panto and theatre may wander off in some of the directions found within the program (not always for good I might add).

I must admit that the DJ seems a bit weird as an inclusion, (what's he doing????), I have the script and I still don't know why he's there (apart from the possibility of trying to get Runcie to do something for a bet??? Come on guys, admit it!).

As for Trevors question on IP addresses, if I may so rudely pretend to be from about here, they're rather like water droplets, plenty bobbing around the surface you can see, but there being few you can actually grab & identify by sight.

I don't believe this represents the worst ever BTR effort either (a certain Dalek story comes to mind), or the worst audio drama I've ever heard either (something that you can barely listen to/would probably ruin your speakers).

Now I expect this post/thread in true forum tradition to become swamped by all kinds of arguing, fighting, cat scratching, biteing and stuff, so I'll leave people/experts in such pursuits to it.

Mr Spratley.
From OIABM Productions